


Vulcan

by newisalwaysbetter



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: 20th Century, Anachronistic, Bicycles, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Happy Ending, Humor, Inventor!Rufus, Witch!Jiya, Witchcraft, alcohol mention, halloween fic, unkindness to Rufus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-15 14:58:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21255221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newisalwaysbetter/pseuds/newisalwaysbetter
Summary: "The most wanted woman in town has announced that she’ll only marry the one who can open her front door with the key around her cat’s neck. Many men try to hunt the cat down, chase and trap it, but to no avail, the cat is simply too quick, smart and clever, and always finds a way to evade and avoid them."Rufus, the local tinkerer, is more interested in his bicycles and lightbulbs than any cat. But it just may be the cat is interested in him.





	Vulcan

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elora_Lane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elora_Lane/gifts).

> Happy Halloween, y'all!
> 
> I wasn't originally planning to write anything this year, but then I woke up this morning and was like, you know what we all deserve? 3k of shapeshifting riya. Inspired by the post from which the first paragraph of the summary is taken, which is linked below. Also definitely the fault of kt_anansi for giving me this idea. ;)
> 
> Brief warnings for use of alcohol and mention of violence. And bonus points for guessing the double reference of the title!

The inventor was rising from the trash heap, shaking his hands in defeated irritation, when a flagon sailed through the open window above and made solid contact with his skull. He had time to curse as he went down.

Rufus knew he could only have been out for a moment, because the uproar within the pub next door remained in full swing. Despite his aching head, the relief at being conscious for a moment surpassed the night's disappointment. Then Rufus opened his eyes.

The night sky had taken residence above him.

This in itself was not unusual; Rufus had set out well after sundown, and no reasonable timepiece would account less than seven hours until dawn. But like all countrysiders who made do with lantern, Rufus knew how a night should present itself. He supposed he must be seeing double, because two full moons stared down at him.

The star-speckled sky resolved itself into a face, and sneezed.

Rufus screamed, reasonably. Sharp claws dug into his chest as the cat launched.

Resuming his footing took a full minute, in large part because the night alley threatened to tilt off its axis entirely. He had expected the familiar to be fled, and considered with some trepidation the feathery black shadow watching him from safe distance. Rufus had always through the witch's cat to be unremarkable, but he had never seen it so close. Although it was a dry night, the cat's cinder-brown fur sparkled with dew, and its eyes, luminous and white as moons, swept him up and down appraisingly. Rufus felt hot and cold all at once.

The back door of the pub flew open, and a cascade of light, sound, and townsmen issued from within. Rufus knew their intent, and evidently the cat did too, because it vanished into the trash heap like ash on the wind.

"No, you can't--" Rufus protested, reaching out a futile hand even as the black tail twitched and vanished among the debris. "It's not safe for you there--"

He came up short when the vicious point of a cane poked into his side.

Turning with dread, he found a ragged assembly of local men watching him suspiciously. This was not distinctly different from usual, but the liquor wafting off the mob certified (as if it had been in doubt) that they were irrevocably, impossibly drunk. Rufus took a step back, knowing that there was no where to go.

"Have you seen it?" one of them demanded, with another sharp poke. He was a large man, hale as youth, and it was known among the village that he carried his stick not for purposes of walking so much as for whacking at anything unfortunate enough to offend him. "The rat with the ribbon." His voice slurred, and he might have said _cat,_ but Rufus was reluctant to correct him.

"Yes. Something like. May be." He was rambly when nervous, and the hostile stares of the men who had disliked him from infancy were awakening every nervous bone in his body. (Which was all of them.) "It was just--"

"Small words," another man roared from the back.

Rufus frowned, and ventured a question. "I'm sorry, was that--were you asking me to use smaller words? Or...mocking me for not using larger words?"

A thin man lunged.

Rufus scrambled backwards, but he was already out of reach; the man stumbled, apparently on nothing, and fell several feet short. He remained on the ground, burbling, and the other men readied fists and canes.

"Fine, fine," Rufus spat, throwing up his hands. "The cat's not here any more, all--all right? It went--" He glanced back, at the heap, at the fence dead-ending the alley behind. "It went over the fence."

"You're mad," one snapped. "Ev'ry man here knows it."

Rufus ground his teeth. He'd heard worse. "Look, I saw what I saw. It's a familiar, right? Don't ask me how it works."

It was too little, too late. The men advanced, and Rufus retreated--past the bar door, past the heap where the cat sheltered, back towards the fence caging him in.

The night had been clear, but at that moment there was a distinct thunderclap overhead. The men stopped short, shifting amongst themselves. Rufus's back hit the wooden fence.

Which opened like a door behind him.

He could certainly have been imagining things, but the night seemed to seize around him with a human urgency. The wind danced across his ear, and Rufus heard in its whisper, _Go!_

For a moment, the men of the bar appeared not to see him. Rufus slipped through the fence and fled.

He ran until he was certain the men could not catch him, and the pressure ceased to squeeze his eardrums. To say he was not afraid would have been wrong. There were many things he did not understand, but often he had an inkling, fluttering just beyond his reach, of how such things could be.

The events of tonight he never expected to understand.

It was all the fault of the witch, he decided. Of course no one believed in such things--it was a new century, after all, and technology was supposed to have done away with the superstition that had sustained their ancestors for long centuries.

All the same, that the witchiness of the woman who dwelt in the forest's heart had never stood in dispute. She came into town once a week, veiled and gliding. Rufus had once had the opportunity to see her up close; they were accustomed to walking on the same side of the road, away from the normal folk. He had seen children trying to see beneath her veil, so he had strenuously avoided looking. All he remembered was the wavy lengths of dark hair emerging from beneath.

A scourge, they called her. A rogue element, to be brought under control. Which was why they pursued her cat, and the bronze ribbon tied around its neck.

He who claimed it would have her, so they said. Rufus couldn't remember how it had begun. A promise. A rumor. A myth.

All the same, there was a dark brown cat, a bronze ribbon, and a great deal of trouble, which Rufus went out of his way to avoid on principle.

In the anxious way of over-busy minds, Rufus considered the incongruities of the cat and the woman. She had never, to his admittedly thin knowledge, expressed even a passing interest in marital unity nor submission to a husband. Furthermore, the pub was hardly prime territory for reasonable men, if that had been the cat's purpose there. (The irrationality of this thought passes like an illusion.) The drunken tradesmen there, wearied after a day's labor and gathered to gripe and revive, would have been those most inclined to pursue the cat, and least likely to catch it. Perhaps the cat, or the woman, had been in a teasing mood.

Rufus himself had only come into town that night by chance. The chance in this case had been the rumored possibility that the local clockmaker would be dumping a load of defective gears in the trash heap behind Casey's pub. Rufus never missed out on the chance for gears. But careful inspection of the heap in question, which served as final resting place to all the detritus of local craft, had revealed nothing of interest, and it occurred belatedly that he had been the victim of a malicious prank.

Such things were not uncommon. Rufus was only grateful that no one had leapt out at him during the long slog home. The local children found his sounds of fear endlessly hilarious.

Contrary to popular choice, Rufus had claimed a rundown cabin on the edge of the forest, far from the town. It creaked in wind, attracted bothersome insects, and in winter required thorough stuffing of every gap to avoid leaking heat all over the woods beyond. But for all its many inconveniences, its location provided ample supply of firewood, river water, and isolation--all essential factors to his experiments.

Besides, Rufus thought as he opened the door, he had all the city's glitter at his fingertips, and more.

Every new lamp revealed a new corner of the little cabin, and each corner was crammed to the brim with curiosity. The lights danced in lively spirit on foil, wire, sheet metal, glass. There were gears and wheels, some homemade. Menageries, concoctions, complications.

In the center of this magnificence stood its genius and original, who was having some trouble with his left boot.

"You had a chance," said a clear, dry voice somewhere near his elbow. "Why didn't you take it?"

Rufus glanced down, and found a pair of moonlight eyes watching him from a patch of shadow on the table. "What the..."

"Lots of chances, actually," the cat said matter-of-factly. It cocked its head and narrowed its eyes in the manner of a person trying to solve a difficult problem. Rufus was busy stumbling back against the nearest wall, searching for some cold liquid to throw into his face. He was making a series of confused nonsense sounds, and the cat winced and said, with audible irritation, "Stop that!"

"S-sorry. I apologize." Rufus scrubbed a hand over his mouth. The cat seemed pleased with this apology. "I-it's just. I've never, you know, held conversation with anything besides a...person, before."

The cat rolled its eyes, and leapt down from the table in a shudder of black. Rufus was now fumbling across the kitchen counter for a frying pan, and feeling rather silly about it, on the basis that kitchen implements were perhaps overkill when defending against small disinterested feline intruders, or underkill when handling hostile magical familiars. Either way, Rufus stopped feeling around, and instead watched the cat very closely as it sniffed around a lantern on the floor. "Right, like _you_ would know." 

Rufus tried to decipher this last statement, and found all possibilities to be distressing. "You're..._not_ a cat?"

Those white eyes flashed to him, and he realized suddenly that perhaps this was an offensive question. "I guess I am," the cat said coolly before he could excuse himself, "but I didn't mean to be."

"D-did..." If he truly was at risk of offending some ancient magic, better jump right in. "Did the..." (This is ridiculous. He is a man of _science_.) "Did the _witch_ enchant you?"

This time the cat laughs--a high, twinkling cackle. Rufus takes this as a sign that he's not about to be turned into a toad. "Hardly. I enchanted myself, you see?"

He didn't, and mumbled as much, and the cat said, with an air of exhausted haughtiness: "But you'd like to, right?"

"Sorry?"

"You want to know how the magic works." The cat left the lantern and took a questioning step towards him. "That's why you'd like to catch me."

"No, thanks," said Rufus, wondering if this was the wrong thing to say. The cat's eyes went round, and for the first time that evening, Rufus began to feel that they were on equal ground. "It's not that I don't like your...mistress," he forged on. "I mean, I've never seen her face-to-face; I wouldn't know if I liked her; but. She seems happy enough to be left alone, and I--I understand that."

"Oh," the cat said, after a moment. "I'm sorry."

It turned and began slinking towards the door, and Rufus, who couldn't remember the last time he'd had a guest, realized he had been a poor one. "No, c'mon, wait." It shied away from his outstretched hand, and he withdrew. "If you need to go somewhere, I won't keep you. But why are you here?" The cat gave him a sharp look. "I think you didn't want to be alone tonight. And I'm not great company, but I have--" He gestured to the marvels around him. "_Things,_ and a little milk."

"I'm not interested in your things, tinkerer."

"Inventor," Rufus corrected. This was an important distinction; seeing as no one else rushed to protect his pride, he had shored it up with a few words against the hurtful ones of the town. He was an inventor, and a good one; his inventions often worked in perfect accordance with their purpose, although this was little comfort to the townsfolk. Rufus was well aware they regarded him as something between a witch and madman, which were merely different variations of the Wrong Sort. Eyeing his vast collection of mysteries, he found himself incapable of refuting this last charge.

For this reason, he had always felt a faint kinship to the Woods Witch, if that was, in fact, an accurate description. Until that night, Rufus had had his doubts. Being a scientist, he had possessed an obscure, flickering conception of what a witch _was;_ however, having been called one in the past, he was certain he could say with some definition what a witch _wasn't_.

The cat blinked. "Call yourself whatever you want," it said, "so long as you have some milk."

"Yeah? Oh, right--of course."

He half expected the cat to be gone when he returned from the icebox, but it had simply curled around a lantern and was purring in content. After a minute's consideration, Rufus set the bowl down a safe distance away. 

"I'd like to stay the night," the cat announced. Its purr made it sound on the edge of sleep. "If you don't mind."

"Sure." Rufus kept a few feet's radius from the cat as he extinguished the rest of the lights. "It's a cold night."

"More than you know," the cat murmured.

You would have thought Rufus wouldn't have been able to sleep after all that, but night quickly took him in her soft dark hands. Rufus thought he heard the door open as dawn was coming up, but soon was lost to pleasant dreaming. In the morning light, the cabin was empty, and Rufus spent a sleepy morning worrying the last night had been a dream. But the wooden bowl still sat on the floor, empty, and he saw no mice at all that morning.

"There is money," said the cat the next day. It sat on the mantelpiece, curled around a candle while Rufus fiddled with a filament. "If you were to catch me."

Rufus laughed nervously. It was a nice thought, but... "I have enough. My family in the town have what they need, and..." Rufus looked around at the cabin, at the waterwheel turning outside the window, at the many devices he built from scrap metal, pounded into foil on the anvil out back, strung together and hooked up to electricity. Sometimes he was so proud he could barely speak. "What more could I buy?"

"A bigger house," the cat suggested. "An assistant. Respect."

"Seems like more trouble than it's worth," Rufus said shortly, and held up a strip of foil to the light to check for holes.

"There is power," said the cat the next week. It was night, and Rufus was bent over an oversized volume on circuitry. The cat had taken up residence on page three-seventy-five, and seemed fully unconcerned with Rufus turning pages onto its back. "In having me."

"You wouldn't be happy, though."

A long silence followed.

Rufus, who was still feeling somewhat unsteady given a cat having become the closest thing he had to a friend, retreated into familiarity. "Besides, I can see as well in the dark as you can."

Above them, his lone successful lightbulb, suspended from a beam, flickered on its wire like a star.

"There is _magic_," the cat insisted the next month. "You can't tell me you don't want that."

Rufus had been on his knees for hours stuffing insulation into the cracks in the walls, and the cat had made impatient noises until he had made space on his lap. He looked down. And stopped.

The cat had sounded somewhat muffled. This, as it turned out, was because the cat held the end of the bronze ribbon it in its mouth, offering.

They had discussed this before. Rufus shook his head, and returned to his work.

"Come _on,_" the cat hissed, with a distinctly unromantic impatience. "You can't tell me you don't want to see _magic._"

"I have my own magic. I mean, after a fashion." The words came easily; they were his standard answer to the cat's persuasions, but that night a new thought struck him. "Is there a reason," he said carefully, "that you're so fixed on having me untie the ribbon?"

"Try it," the cat said, leaping onto his shoulder to meow into his ear. "And see."

The inventor scratched the cat under the chin with a finger, and listened to it purr.

"Want to see some magic?" he said, soft, sad.

It nuzzled into his throat. "Yours? Always."

Bicycles were hardly a new invention, but Rufus was proud of his own. It was a diamond-frame Roadster, hand-made last summer in a flash of irritated creativity. Rumors had reached town this year that bicycles were déclassé in the face of the automobile, but much of the town regarded motorized vehicles with a distrust usually reserved for particularly slick travelling salesmen. This was no help to Rufus, who had recently attached a small motor to the metal frame of his bike.

The cat draped itself around the inventor's soldiers, fastening claws into his vest as he mounted the bike. It swayed the first few feet down the rocky trail, before they picked up speed. The night forest around them shone with moonlight.

Rufus felt the air seize around him once again.

"Now?" he called into the wind.

"Faster," the cat yowled. The motorbike picked up speed.

They should have crashed. They should have fallen off trail and struck a rock. They should have hit a tree in the darkness.

Nothing like that happened that night.

As the frost blurred into stars, a young woman's voice cried out, bright and flashing with joy. "_Rufus!"_

His heart was as light as his shoulders. When Rufus looked over his shoulder, a woman's face hovered there. Her arms were warm around his chest, and she could have been sitting on the backseat--if Rufus's bike had been a tandem.

Beauty overrides irrationality, and Rufus stared. He had only ever seen that dark hair cascading from beneath a veil, but that night it was awash around her shoulders, and as full of starlight as her laughter. When her eyes opened, he saw them as dark as the sky, and he knew she was whole.

"You couldn't take the ribbon off yourself," he gasped.

She kissed his cheek. "You knew."

"I didn't want to force you--"

"I couldn't tell you--"

They broke off, interrupting each other. They were breathing. They were laughing. They were.

"So," Rufus said at last. "Witch."

"Jiya," she corrected him. "Mister Inventor."

"Well, Jiya..." Rufus let his lips brush her nose. "I'm not certain I'm a good enough inventor to bike us home." He checked the engine. "We're low on fuel."

A pair of hands came to rest on his shoulders. They felt electrified, like the few times he had badly shocked himself on a circuit, but not...painful.

"You have magic, Rufus." The voice in his ear thrummed along the middle harmonics. "Let me show you more." 

The bike motor rumbled. The wind sang. The forest stood empty.

And the night stars shone down--like eyes, like frost, like a thousand primitive lightbulbs, enchantments, yet to come.

**Author's Note:**

> \- Written in the midst of a Halloween snowstorm.
> 
> This being far and away my longest riya fic yet, drop me a note if you liked it! Thanks for reading :)


End file.
